. . .and its very good. Most of the tunes you like very much, and the ones you don’t particularly care for sound like maybe if you listen a few times you may like them too. Full range of tunes, jigs, reels, polka, air, hornpipe…nice mix of mostly tunes new to you, but some you recognize, maybe even play. All in all, a great addition to your collection of IrTrad, of which you have a modest collection.
My question is this: how do you listen to this CD? Do you play it exclusively, or maybe only once a month? Do you play tunes you want to learn over and over and over, or do you listen to the whole CD? To those of us who read music, do you go and find the music and follow along, or maybe learn it from the sheet, then take it back to the CD and fit the version you picked up to the version you’re hearing?
A year or so ago I had the chance of watching three professional musicians and two non-musicians listen to CDs they were unfamiliar with, and I was astonished by how different the experience was between the two types of people. It really floored me.
Last night I listened to a CD I got about 8 months ago, and have listened to maybe 5 times. I found it curious that I hadn’t listened to it more, or learned ANY tunes off it, and I started wondering how others listened to their collection.
There isn’t a ‘way’ I listen to CDs. Some I listen to quite often for a while and then once or twice a year thereafter. Others I listen to only a few times with substantial gaps between occasions. CDs that have been lying around for ages suddenly become favourites. At some levels I absorb music quite quickly so, for the element of surprise in listening, I need new CDs all the time.
I’m pretty sure I’m not typical. I have well over 10,000 CDs and LPs and a great many singles in many different styles. I don’t know how many; I stopped counting years ago. I’ve accumulated records, books and musical instruments all my life.
Well, being a college student until very recently, and planning to be a college student again very soon, I tend to buy cds rather sparingly. And when I do buy some, I’ll listen to the new one or the one I like best repeatedly for maybe a week, until I know exactly what’ll happen on any given track, and when, even if I’m not actually actively listening to it. At some stage in there - maybe on day 1, maybe not for a couple of weeks - I’ll go through and just play all the tracks with the cd. If I really like any of them, I’ll play them over and over until I can actually remember them independently of hearing them on the cd (not exactly as played on the cd, obviously) and well enough to start them at a session and go into the correct second part! And if I REALLY want to remember any of them, I’ll transcribe. Usually I’ll spend maybe an evening playing through the cd, and after that I might not listen to the cd again for 6 months or a year. At which time, I may or may not still be able to start tunes, but I’ll play along with each track as I listen to the cd, and usually there’ll be a couple that didn’t particularly jump out at me the first time, that I’ll like and learn properly and write down. I think that if I bought more than 3 cds at a time, ever, I’d have problems - I got 3 cds last month, and went through 1 of them in detail, and listened to the others (both brilliant music too) maybe twice each, but haven’t played any of the stuff on there yet, and haven’t thought about any of them in the last 4 weeks. Hmmm. I sense a tune-learning session coming on…
The weird thing that I find is that if a tune is played through 3 times at normal session speed, I can usually play along (more or less) by the third time through, even if I’ve never heard it before, but as soon as the person who actually knows the tune and is playing it stops, I have no memory of it over 10 minutes. It’s gone. So to be able to start tunes, I have to play them alone (so I have to think ahead, not just react quickly to the other person), or, to remember them over a few years, write 'em down. It’s weird. Luckily, if I’ve heard a tune a couple of times before at a session, and have ‘played along’, then I can do a pretty good imitation of someone who knows what she’s doing… :roll:
Deirdre
Ty, I think what you’re getting at is that different people listen to different parts of what is coming off the album. Many musicians listen for their own instruments, and then judge the music by how well their instrument is played. This sort of listener really gets excited if they hear something they don’t know how to do or play. Others listen for what is familiar to them, and judge the recording by whether it meets their personal standards or tastes.
Personally, I just listen to the music to see if I like it or not. If it doesn’t catch my ear, I don’t care how well it is played, or what fancy ornaments were employed by the musicians. In fact, I have to listen to an album I like many many times just to get past enjoying the music enough so that I can take it apart and start learning from it. Recent case in point, Pat Mitchell’s album.
When I read your question, it made me laugh thinking about my own convoluted style of dealing with new cds. Here goes: First I take new cd and divide it into one of two catagories 1)primarily solo instrument I play (whistle or banjo) , or 2) other - general ITM. Then I take new cd and put it into musicmatch on the computer and put new cd into the ipod for easy listening access. If the cd is general itm and I like most of the tracks, I just listen to the whole thing several times in the first week, then tapering off until I remember it’s in my playlist on the ipod). However, if it’s a primarily solo instrument cd that I can learn off of easily - then the real work begins. lol I take the tracks I want to learn most off of the cd and put into the slow speed cd transcriber and make wav. files at 80% 50% and 30% of the original speed. Then I take these files and dump them back to the ipod under the catagory “new banjo tunes to learn” or “new whistle tunes to learn”. Then take the one I like best and listen to it slowed for however long until I can hum it in my sleep, all ornaments included. Then I sit down and learn it and it seems to come pretty quickly this way. When I’m done, I dump it off and replace with new tunes from new cds. Then, after I learned the tunes, I remember I had the whole cd that I liked just the way it was and remember to listen to it and enjoy it, and not pick it apart. LOL
CDs I like alot get played very frequently – usually at least several times a week. CDs that don’t catch my fancy so much tend to wander onto the shelf and stay there for a long time.
However, these days I rip all my new CDs to MP3. And in addition to the CDs I listen to regularly, I have a directory full of tunes that I want to work on – and I listen to the contents of that directory several times a week, too. Frequently tunes make it from CDs I don’t listen to that often, because I am interested in that particular tune. (Occasionally I make exciting finds in the CDs I don’t listen to, like discovering the Paddy Killoran track on “From Galway to Dublin” – when I last looked at that CD, I wasn’t familiar with that set of tunes, nor who Killoran was, but after another year of learning about the music, realizing I had that recording made me giddy with joy.)
I don’t bother slowing down tracks unless I’m really confused about the contents, or I want to study it very carefully. Partially this is because I’d rather get the feel of the tune than the exact ornaments – and partially this is because I’m lazy.
Seeing as I am not very brilliant at the flute (I haven’t had the time to play anything lately at all in fact ) I go through it and listen to the voice, the lyrics (if it is in a language I understand). If I don’t like the voice, I can’t listen to the rest of it either. Sadly. So I guess I fall into the category of people who listen for their “primary instrument” and dismiss the lot if I don’t like it.
If I do like it I will play it until it (‘it’ being the vocal parts) sits, in the background whilst doing other things (doing the dishes is a great way of listening to music AND doing something). If I like it moderately I will listen to it every now and then. If I don’t like it at all I will let it gather dust until one day I get bored and want to listen to Something Else. Which reminds me, I still haven’t tried the “Pogue Mahone” by Pogues a second time, must have been years since that one was released…
I listen to a new CD in the background a few times. If I really like it, it is copied to MD and listened to on my daily walk to the office and back home over a period of 2 to 8 weeks. I usually have 2-3 MDs I cycle through at any given time. If I fall in love with a tune, I learn it from the CD, but mostly they just sink in and bubble up weeks or months later again.
At home I get too distracted to listen closely to recordings, but I really enjoy fully-immersed listening when traveling by train or walking around. I prefer solo recordings, mostly flute, but other instruments as well.
I have heard, but cannot verify, that different tunes attract different types of people. I don’t know if there has ever been a real, officially-sanctioned, conducted by genuine scientists, as-used-in-hospitals sort of study on this, or if its just a stray idea.
I know for myself that I can listen to whole rafts of recordings of jigs and reels, singly or in medleys, and then suddenly, in the midst of all the noise, a tune, or part of a tune, will jump out and grab me, and I have to learn that tune. This probably has to do with some mental defect of my own, but the tunes, or versions of tunes, that really strike me are the ones I remember best, the ones I can ornament, or create variations to best.
I will show these tunes to my teacher, who will say something like, “Oh, that one. Is that all you want?” Then she’ll show me a tune that may be quite technically challenging for me to learn, but I can’t retain the tune because it seems so dull to me.
) I go through it and listen to the voice, the lyrics (if it is in a language I understand). If I don’t like the voice, I can’t listen to the rest of it either. Sadly. So I guess I fall into the category of people who listen for their “primary instrument” and dismiss the lot if I don’t like it.